Search This Blog

Subscribe to this blog

Follow by Email

Randal Rauser's review of my book Believing Bullshit - my response

A
while ago the well-known Christian apologist and blogger Randal Rauser posted a
very long review of my book Believing
Bullshit on his blog. You can find Rauser’s review here.

While
making a few nice comments about the book, Rauser was generally very negative.
He posted the same review on the amazon page for my book and gave the book just
two stars.

A
negative review is fine, of course. However, Rauser’s review is academically
poor (it was written in haste, I suspect).

Such
is the length of Rauser’s review that I didn’t, at the time, have time to go
through all of it, line by line, pointing out the numerous misrepresentations, muddles
and errors that it contains. I told Rauser I would get round to responding.

I
still don’t have time to respond to Rauser’s entire review in detail. But,
being on sabbatical, I have devoted a couple of hours to dealing with
points Rauser made regarding just the first chapter of the book.

Were
Rauser’s review more academically robust and interesting, I might have devoted the many more hours required to respond to the rest of it. But the review is poorly argued, and in any case I
suspect no one will bother reading the thousands of words of commentary I
would have to produce to deal with the entire thing properly.

The
first chapter of Believing Bullshit
examines the dubious way mystery is often appealed to defend belief systems,
especially supernatural belief systems (religious and non-religious). Rauser
picks up on a later section of the chapter - on the problem of evil and the way
in which mystery is sometimes appealed to by theists in order to try to deal
with that problem. Rauser writes:

Law then proceeds to identify numerous
unjustified appeals to mystery. For example, later in the chapter he turns to
Christian philosopher Stephen Wykstra's response to the problem of evil.
Wykstra argue that the "the goods by virtue of which this Being [God]
allows known suffering should very often be beyond our ken." (Cited in 60)
In other words, for Wykstra, the fact that we cannot identify the reasons why
God would allow specific evils is not a defeater to the existence of God since
we shouldn't expect to be able to identify those reasons. Law retorts that
"when loving parents inflict suffering on the child for that child's good,
the parents will do their very best to explain to their child that they do care
for them and that this suffering is for their own good." (60) But as a
rebuttal to Wykstra this point is impotent since it is easy to envision conditions
in which parents would not inform their children of the reasons why they
suffer. (For example, the child may not be able to understand the reason, or
understanding the reason might create a greater emotional burden or....) By the
same token, God could have ample reasons for not informing us as to why we
suffer specific evils. In short, Law's critique of Wykstra is much too brief
and underdeveloped to be of any use. Sadly, this is one of numerous cases where
Law's treatment of theistic positions and arguments is cursory to the point of
distortion.

Ironically,
it’s Rauser that’s here guilty of crude distortion.

First,
if you check the book (p59-62) you will see that while my discussion of the
Wykstra-type appeal to mystery does indeed include the parent analogy that
Rauser mentions above, it also makes two additional, different points against
Wykstra, the last of which I clearly flag as the most significant. By
failing to mention these other two points, Rauser creates the false impression
the only point I make with respect to Wykstra is the parent analogy. In fact my
treatment of Wykstra-type appeals to mystery is not nearly as "cursory" as Rauser
would have you believe.

The
second of the points I make re Wykstra-type appeals to mystery is that there
are presumably limits to how much evil
can be put down to God’s mysterious ways. I ask, if the world resembled a vast
Heironymous Bosch like vision of Hell with not a jot of beauty or happiness,
would it still be reasonable for us to say “there’s no compelling evidence here
that the world was not created by a supremely powerful and benevolent creator.
It is still entirely reasonable for us to believe in an all-powerful, all-good
god”. Intuitively not.

The
third point I make, which relates to the second, and which I explicitly say is the most significant of the three points,
is that the same sort of appeal to mystery can be employed to defend belief in
an evil god against the evidential problem of good. I point out, what most of
us intuitively recognise, that:

“we are justified in supposing
there’s no evil god on the basis of the amount of good we observe. There are limits
to the amount of good that can be put down to an evil god’s mysterious ways,
and those limits are clearly exceeded by what we see around us”

In short, Rauser conveniently
ignores most of my critique of Wykstra-type appeals to mystery. He omits all
mention of what is actually my main objection, picking up instead on a less
significant point (the parent analogy).

As a matter of fact, even Rauser’s response to my
use of the parent analogy involves a serious distortion. As you can see above, Rauser
suggests I have overlooked the fact that sometimes a parent won’t give a child
an explanation for why the child is being made to suffer, because the
explanation is beyond the ability of the child to understand.

Well I don’t overlook that. In fact,
I actually address that issue in the book.
I say that such a parent will nevertheless “make some sort of attempt to explain why they are causing this
suffering, even if only in the kind of oversimplified terms a child might
understand.” They won’t just sit in stony silence, offering absolutely nothing
in the way of explanation or even reassurance, while causing their child immense
pain.

I then go on to anticipate and deal
with the suggestion that God has indeed offered us such explanations and
reassurances regarding the suffering he inflicts – they are to be
found in the Bible. As I point out, this just raises the question – why are the explanations
so unclear and, in any case, “what about the countless generations of humans
that suffered before the Bible was written?”

As you can see above, the only other
suggestion Rauser makes for why a parent might fail to offer any such explanation
or reassurance to their child while making that child suffer horribly is that
this “might create a greater emotional burden”.

Really? Think about that for a
moment. Is this a situation you find “easy to envisage”? I don’t. I can’t
imagine any circumstances in which I would refuse to offer any explanation or
reassurance to my child while I was inflicting terrible but necessary suffering
on them. But even if Rauser can envisage such a situation, that’s still not
enough to get Wykstra off the hook. For what Rauser needs to show is not that
there could be, but that there’s quitelikely to be, a reason why God will
fail to offer any explanation or even reassurance at all to those upon whom he
inflicts horrendous suffering.

So, Rauser’s criticism of my discussion
of Wykstra-type appeals to mystery to deal with the problem of evil is (i) misleading
because Rauser creates the impression that my only response to Wykstra is the parent
analogy when in fact that’s the least of my objections (ii) doubly misleading
because, far from overlooking a point Rauser suggests I overlook, I actually
address it, (iii) weak because the point Rauser does make re the parent analogy
is dealt with in the book and (ii) doubly weak because Rauser just ignores my
main argument against Wykstra.

In short, Rauser's critique is inaccurate
and shoddy. As I say, I think it was written in haste.

Rauser then continues:

As
one reads the chapter one is led to wonder how Law would react to naturalists,
atheists and skeptics who appeal to mystery. Consider atheist philosopher Colin
McGinn. McGinn argues that many of the most recalcitrant problems in philosophy
such as the mind brain problem may simply be beyond our ability to understand
(they really are mysteries). Moreover, he argues that we should expect such
mysteries given that we are finite, fallible evolved creatures. McGinn certainly
makes a reasonable case for our cognitive limitations. Why would we think that
we can necessarily understand all the deepest problems of existence? But if it
is reasonable for the atheist to play the mystery card when it comes to
something like the problem of consciousness then why is it not reasonable for
the theist to do so when it comes to the problem of evil?

I enjoyed this reference to Colin
McGinn as I’m a fan of his. In fact I was taught briefly by McGinn while I was
at Oxford (in fact in our first tutorial I saw the classic paper on
mysterianism to which Rauser is alluding on McGinn’s desk with a rejection
letter from a philosophy journal – which goes to show that even classic papers
like that can be summarily rejected).

Anyhow, let me first point out that
I say very clearly in the book that atheists etc. are also prone to such dodgy
moves (it’s not the content of the belief system that makes it an intellectual
black hole but the manner in which it is defended etc. – thus any belief system
can become an intellectual black hole, atheism included). Someone reading
Rauser’s review might well conclude I assume that naturalists, atheists etc.
are immune. I don’t assume that. Nor do I believe it (though I do believe, and
have argued, that religious belief systems are particularly prone to these sorts of
immunizing appeals to mystery).

Secondly, I am very clear in the
book that of course it’s legitimate to appeal to mystery on occasion. Indeed, I
acknowledge that some things may be in principle unknowable. Here’s the
conclusion of the mystery chapter:

Mystery,
as such, is no bad thing. Pointing out mysteries can be a valuable exercise –
firing up our curiosity and getting us to engage our intellects. Nor is there
anything wrong with acknowledging that some things may forever remain a
mystery, may even be in principle unknowable.

Sometimes
it’s also reasonable, when faced with a problem case for an otherwise
well-established theory, to put it down as a mysterious anomaly. If on
countless occasions an experiment has confirmed water boils at 100 degrees C,
the fact that on one occasion it appeared not to may quite reasonably be put
down to some unknown factor. If we can’t discover what went wrong, it can be
reasonable for us to just shrug and move on – putting the freak result down to
some mysterious problem with the set-up (a faulty thermometer, perhaps).

It’s
also often reasonable, when we have a theory that works but we don’t fully
understand why it works, to say, “Why
this happens remains, for the moment, a mystery. But we know it does”. We might
have strong evidence that smoking causes cancer, say, long before we understand
why it does so.

So
the appeal to mystery has its proper place, even in science. What I object to
is the way in which the appeal to mystery is increasingly relied on to deal
with what otherwise would appear to be powerful evidence or arguments against
certain beliefs, particularly beliefs in the supernatural. Whenever mystery is
erected as a barrier to rational inquiry, a barrier that says, “You scientists
and philosophers may come this far
armed with the power of reason, but no
further – turn back now!” we should be concerned, particularly if no good
reason is given for supposing science and reason cannot, in fact, take us further.
The more we appeal to mystery to get ourselves out of intellectual trouble –
the more we use it as a carpet under which to sweep inconvenient facts or
discoveries – the more vulnerable we become to deceit: to deceit both by others
and by ourselves.

So, yes, some things may be in principle
be beyond our comprehension, and yes it can sometimes be legitimate to appeal
to mystery. As you can see, I very
clearly spell all this out in my first chapter (though you’d be hard-pressed to guess it from Rauser’s review).

What I object to, pretty clearly, is
not the suggestion that some things
might be in principle mysterious and unknowable, but rather the way in which mystery
is increasingly appealed to in order to immunize what we believe against evidence
and arguments to the contrary.

Now, we can agree that consciousness
is a baffling phenomenon - perhaps necessarily so, as McGinn argues. But the
point is consciousness is a problem for everyone – atheists and theists,
naturalists and non-naturalists. There’s a thorny puzzle here whichever side of
these various fences you sit. It’s not a problem that favours one side over
another.

Some “problems” in science and
philosophy are simply puzzles – we can’t figure out the solution to a puzzle or
answer to a question. The problem of consciousness is an example.

Other “problems” are different. They
are problems for a particular belief
system – problems in the sense that they constitute a very significantintellectual
threat to the belief system (and not to its negation). That’s a very
different sort of “problem”. It’s a “threat” problem.

Theists recognize that the problem
of evil is a threat-type problem. It’s not a problem for atheists. It’s not any sort
of threat to what atheists believe. But it is a very significant problem, and is of
course widely recognized to be such a problem, for theists like Rauser. It’s a
problem precisely because the amount of evil we observe appears more than
enough to render belief in an all-powerful and all-good deity highly unlikely.

Some theists (like Wykstra) appeal
to mystery in order in order to immunize what they believe against this
evidential threat. I point out that this is an example of a more general
practice when it comes to what appears to be evidence against supernatural
belief. I give non-theistic examples too (concerning crystal healing, ESP)

So does Rauser have a point re the
use of mystery to deal with the problem of evil?

No. He just muddies the waters by
muddling up different sorts of “problem”. The analogy Rauser draws between the problem
of evil and the problem of consciousness is false. The problem of evil is a threat-type
problem for his brand of theism. And increasingly to appeal to “mystery” in
order to immunize theism against such an intellectual threat is, I suggest, a
clear warning sign of an intellectual black hole. Nothing Rauser says here suggests
I am mistaken about that.

So that’s what Rauser has to say
about my first chapter. His review of that chapter is inaccurate, muddled, and
sets up straw men. The rest of Rauser’s review of Believing Bullshit is equally academically shoddy. But, as I say, I
lack the time or the patience to go through and respond to his similar
commentary on the other seven chapters.

Comments

Given my own experiences engaging with Randal, I'm not at all surprised that he's resorted mostly to obfuscation, misdirection and goalpost-shifting. It's the nature of apologetics to keep the target as semantically amorphous as possible. Being the fan of your book that I am, I was underwhelmed to the extreme by Randal's predictably flaccid reply and I'm glad you took the time to write a cogent and incisive rebuttal.

"So the appeal to mystery has its proper place, even in science."An excellent example of this is superconductivity. Physicists thought they had figured out the phenomenon conclusively, as the 1972 Nobel Price for BCS theory shows.Then came Müller and Bednorz along, who falsified the theory by showing that superconductivity was possible at higher temperatures than BCS theory predicted. They received the Nobel price too, in 1987, which was about a year after publication. That's a record as far as I know.The thing is that there isn't a satisfying theory of superconductivity at high temperature yet. The phenomenon is a mystery. Still no physicist (including the religious ones) will ever claim that physics shouldn't do research on the subject because, you know, mystery.I assume apologists would agree. Then why set up a stop sign for divine reasons to allow evil? Why not assume divine causality for high temperature superconductivity as well?Of course what you write about consciousness equally applies to high temperature superconductivity as well.

I commend a regular read of Rauser's blog. He is one of the most clever and personable Christian apologists I have ever had the pleasure of encountering. He is a master of using the tu quoque fallacy to answer critiques of Christianity.

I am eagerly awaiting his return to the Unbelievable radio show paired up against Stephen or another philosopher capably armed to respond to his bag of tricks.

I think Randal's main complaint was that you were including theists in with the group that believes bullshit. He doesn't really believe that believing in an invisible god is really bullshit or intellectually deficient in any way.

As you demonstrated so persuasively in "Believing Bullshit," the existence of good and evil in our world is logically irreconcilable with a hands-on god who is good or bad – but atheism is not the only alternative. Consider a transcendent god who (1) has no innate moral qualities and (2) is completely hands-off, i. e., totally inactive in the Universe. Good and evil do not rule out such a god.

What are the chances of such an unconventional god existing? Quite good, logically. As for (1) above, a transcendent god presumably pre-existed our 13-14 billion year old Universe. If the only “thing” that existed back then was god, there would be no moral issues. As for (2), if god guided or sometimes created events in our world, including human actions, we would be mere puppets and god nothing more than the puppet-master. From our perspective and god’s, such a scenario would be meaningless and nonsensical.

If god alone existed before the Universe, it’s seems fair to assume logically that god created our physical world (which also resolves the “something out of nothing” issue). However, that does not mean that god created us in his image or subject to his ultimate power. It makes much more sense that god would prefer, instead of puppets, a variety of life forms that were fully independent of his design or control. That would in turn explain why god would have (a) created the physical ingredients of a material universe with natural laws and random chance conducive to the unguided evolution of some kind of life and then (b) let events in our Universe occur without any divine interference.

Is a hands-off, unresponsive god relevant to us? Certainly not in the conventional religious sense, but probably so on the bases of why the Big Bang occurred and what may happen after we die.

Granted that my comments require a very big leap of faith that some kind of transcendent being or force exists, but they do address your argument about the implausibility of a good or bad god.

Popular Posts

Three key points to make when debating the existence of God. 1. Defining God First, in asking: Does God exist? It would be good to get some clarity about which God we are talking about. I
shall assume we are talking about a God that is omniscient, omnipotent, and
perfectly good: Prof
William Lane Craig defines God as a 'maximally great being' - which he says requires
that God be morally perfect. Prof
Richard Swinburne similarly characterises God as 'a person who is omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good'.

It suffices to establish atheism, then (given these guys' characterisations/definitions of theism), that I show beyond reasonable doubt that there's no being that is omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good.

What is Humanism? “Humanism” is a word that has
had and continues to have a number of meanings. The focus here is on kind of atheistic
world-view espoused by those who organize and campaign under that banner in the
UK and abroad. We should acknowledge that
there remain other uses of term. In one of the loosest senses of the expression,
a “Humanist” is someone whose world-view gives special importance to human
concerns, values and dignity. If that is what a Humanist is, then of course most
of us qualify as Humanists, including many religious theists. But the fact
remains that, around the world, those who organize under the label “Humanism” tend
to sign up to a narrower, atheistic view. What does Humanism,
understood in this narrower way, involve? The boundaries of the concept remain somewhat
vague and ambiguous. However, most of those who organize under the banner of Humanism
would accept the following minimal seven-point characterization of their world-view.

Folk who believe in fairies, or miracles, or alien
visitation, are generally fond of an argument called ARGUMENT TO THE BEST
EXPLANATION.
Here's an example of argument to the best explanation (or abduction, as it's sometimes known):
I see shoes poking out from under the curtain and the curtain
twitching slightly above them. I can also hear breathing. I infer there's
someone standing behind the curtain. Why? Because that's the best available
explanation of what I observe. True enough, the twitching might be caused by the breeze from an
open window and the shoes were just coincidentally placed in the same spot. But
I reckon that's a bit less likely than that there's someone standing there (for
what explains the breathing noise?)
Quite what makes an explanation the 'best' is controversial,
but there's some agreement that the simpler and more elegant an explanation,
the better. So, for example, I could explain that twitching curtain by supposing
tha…